Issue #3

All Good Things Come to an End

Ahoy there fellow Netizens!

This week we have two reminders that all good things come to an end: Skiff and Authy desktop.

Skiff

Skiff is (or was) a privacy focused productivity suite offering end-to-end encrypted email, calendar, notes and storage. It’s relatively new but was becoming more and more popular. In fact, as of November 2023, it had nearly 2 million users.

Unfortunately, last week users found out Skiff will be shutting down in six months after being acquired by Notion, another productivity company. Users were understandably upset about this. After all, migrating to another service is time consuming and anxiety inducing as our email accounts become the key to our online identities.

But the way Skiff communicated the shutdown was especially bad. Users were informed of the news via an email with the subject line “Major Skiff update,” making it seem like a regular marketing email.

The body of the email was not much better. It started by excitedly announcing Skiff was now part of Notion and talking about the companies’ shared values, making it seem like Skiff would continue to exist. It wasn’t until the middle of the email that users were told all Skiff services would be shutting down.

Skiff’s post on X (formerly Twitter) about the acquisition did not mention that its services were shutting down at all. However, users made use of the social media site’s “community notes” feature to add information about the shutdown to the post.

If you’re a Skiff user, this means you should export your data and migrate to a different service ASAP. Tuta and Proton are probably the best known Skiff alternatives, so they are a good place to start.

And although Skiff has said its products will continue to run for six months, don’t leave migrating to the last minute, as you never know what will happen in that time. Which brings me to Authy desktop.

Authy Desktop

Authy is a popular authenticator app that you can use to secure your accounts with two-factor authentication (2FA). It is well-liked for offering encrypted online backups and for having apps for pretty much any operating system, including Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and Linux.

However, Twilio, Authy’s parent company, announced last month that the desktop apps would reach end-of-life in August. Then, a few days ago, Twilio moved the end-of-life date forward, to March 19th. Authy desktop users now have to decide whether to switch to one of Authy’s mobile apps or move to a different authenticator app entirely.

Fortunately, there are a lot of authenticator apps to choose from. Some lesser known ones that I’ve tested and know to be good include 2FAS, Aegis and ente Auth.

If you use a password manager like 1Password or Bitwarden, they also have a built in authenticator too. However, there are some risks to using your password manager for 2FA, so you’ll want to consider carefully whether the risk is acceptable given your situation.

Until next time, stay safe out there!